I Got a Rock for Ya
by Just Funning
Summary: What might happen if Charlie Brown got really pissed off that he only got rocks for Halloween...


**Disclaimer: I do not own the Peanuts characters.**

I GOT A ROCK FOR YA

(CHARLIE BROWN'S REVENGE)

Ms. Matthers was just about ready for bed when she heard a noise coming from her front porch. She checked the clock and saw that it was almost midnight, surely too late for more trick-or-treaters. They should all be snuggled in their beds with bags full of candy lying nearby, waiting to fill the tummies and rot the teeth.

Pulling a terrycloth robe over her nightgown, Ms. Matthers started downstairs, moving slowly, placing each step carefully. At seventy-eight, she wasn't as spry as she used to be, and a tumble down the stairs could very well be the end of her. Halfway down, she heard the noise again; it sounded like someone dragging something across her front porch.

She hesitated for a moment, wondering if this was some rambunctious youngster perpetrating a Halloween trick on her. Would there be a flaming bag of dog pooh on the other side of her door? Would she find toilet paper hanging like streamers from her tree branches? Would there be yoke smeared across the windows with eggshells littering the ground beneath?

Ms. Matthers laughed at her own foolishness and continued down to the first floor. She knew all the kids in this neighborhood and they were decent, well-behaved tykes. Even that Negro child, Franklin. Sure, Lucy was a bit of a spoiled brat, and there was Linus with his unhealthy attachment to his blanket. And she couldn't forget Peppermint Patty, _everyone_ knew about Peppermint Patty. But still, they were good children, not the type to engage in vandalism. Except maybe the retarded boy that lived next door.

She laughed harder as she thought about the baldheaded Mongoloid and his mangled costume. He'd arrived at the door with a group of children in plastic masks, but she'd recognized him instantly. A white sheet with a multitude of holes cut into it in a random pattern; apparently he'd wanted to be a ghost but had not known when to stop with the scissors. The little dolt.

As unchristian as it was, Ms. Matthers did not like having the boy in the neighborhood. Every time she glanced out the window and saw his oversized, misshapen head and those blank eyes, it made her uneasy. He was always out in the backyard talking to that beagle of his, as if the dog could understand and communicate back. Children like that belonged in an institution, locked away from regular people. Almost everyone in the neighborhood felt the same, but so far they had not been able to drive the Brown family out. They continued to try, however, employing a number of subtle tactics.

Like the rocks.

Every year on Halloween, the families in the neighborhood agreed to give the retarded boy not candy in his bag, but a rock. The idiot probably went home and tried to eat them. It was petty and mean-spirited, she admitted, but eventually his parents would get the point, take their son and leave the neighborhood.

She reached the bottom of the stairs and paused to rest. At her age, she really should think of moving her bedroom downstairs. Her grown daughter had tried convincing her to take a room in a retirement home, but Ms. Matthers would never do any such thing. This was her home, where she had lived since she was a little girl, and no one would ever make her leave.

Once she had gotten her second wind, she moved to the window by the door, parting the curtain just enough to glance out at the porch. She didn't see anything, but she could still hear the scraping noise. She briefly considered calling the police, but that was an extreme to which she didn't want to resort. If it turned out to be nothing, she would be embarrassed and her daughter would renew her campaign to get Ms. Matthers into that nursing home. Besides, she lived in a nice neighborhood, not the poor section of town where that white trash PigPen family had a trailer.

She opened the door and stepped out into the chilly autumn night. Cinching her robe at the waist, she turned to find the retarded Brown boy sitting on the edge of the porch, running a large rock back and forth across the planks, leaving gouges in the wood. Ms. Matthers recognized the smooth, oblong rock as one of the stones that formed a border around her garden in the backyard. The boy himself was still dressed in his Halloween costume, stubby little arms jutting out from two of the many holes in the sheet. She could see his emotionless eyes through two more of the holes, and they were trained rather intently on Ms. Matthers.

She was just about to ask him what he was doing on her porch so late when he suddenly bolted forward, moving quicker than she'd ever seen anyone move. He plowed right into her legs, knocking her over so that she landed hard on her left side, hearing bones _crack_ as white-hot pain exploded in her hip. She rolled over and stared up at the boy, who towered over her, standing motionless, the stone clutched firmly in his right hand. As she watched, he raised the stone above his head, it trembled there for a moment, then he brought it down fast and hard. Right toward Ms. Matthers' face.

"Waaaaaah, Wah-wah-waaaaaaaaah…" she started to scream, but then the stone shattered her teeth and dislocated her jaw. The pain was so intense that it was almost unreal. She tried to scream again, but she ended up coughing on the blood that filled her mouth and ran down her throat. Her eyes found the boy and formed a silent plea for mercy, but the stone took out first the left and then the right. She started to retreat into her own mind as the agony consumed her, and she heard rather than felt it as the stone broke her nose into a bloody, twisted wreckage.

Ms. Matthers last thought before she died was that maybe she should have gone to live in that nursing home after all.

* * *

Charlie Brown stood over the body, staring down at the smashed-in ruin that had once been Ms. Matthers' face. Blood and brain matter splattered the porch like some kind of abstract painting. Beneath the sheet, his face registered no emotion, no reaction to what he had just done. The stone was slick with the woman's blood, and he brought it in close to his face, sticking his tongue through one of the holes in the sheet to lick away the sticky residue.

"Good grief," he whispered before heading off to the next house.


End file.
